LONDON IN DARKNESS.

New Zealand Tablet, 16 May 1918, Page 11

LONDON IN DARKNESS.

Londoners nowadays talk of London being very dark, but the darkness is evidently nothing to compare with an occasion when, on December 2, 1872, the gas stokers of London, to the number of 2400, struck work, and the strike lasted until the 6th, during which time the supply of gas was limited to only a few streets in the city. In many districts it was difficult to move about, and as night closed in the aspect of the West End was dismal in the extreme.

No light could be had at many of the railway stations, and at 7 o’clock consternation was occasioned among the passengers at Ludgate Hill Station by the sudden disappearance of all the lights. The panic which would have almost certainly occurred was prevented by the fact that an establishment near by was sufficiently lighted to make the darkness visible. The St. James’s Theatre had to be closed, another had to use candles in the front, and a third house was in a state of considerable dimness. The inhabitants of the Metropolis got some conception of what London must have been like at night time before the invention of gas, and without even the dim, flickering lamps which preceded it.